Owned by Agnes Jane Reeves Greer, it had second-choice rights to NBC programming and operated from a site shared with sister FM station WKJF-FM.

Like many other ultra high frequency (UHF) TV stations, it struggled economically because not all homes could receive it and its signal was comparatively weak.

The independent stations were sold to U.S. Communications, a unit of American Viscose Corporation, which completed construction and put WPGH-TV on the air on February 1, 1969.

U.S. Communications struggled with all of Overmyer's permits amid a soft advertising market; WPGH-TV was the third to leave the air on August 16, 1971, and was placed into bankruptcy.

Leon Crosby of San Francisco led an investor consortium named Pittsburgh Telecasting, which bought WPGH-TV out of bankruptcy and returned it to the air, this time for good, on January 14, 1974.

Under Crosby and the successive ownerships of the Meredith Corporation, Lorimar-Telepictures, and Renaissance Broadcasting, WPGH-TV endured as Pittsburgh's leading independent outlet.

Sinclair Broadcast Group acquired WPGH-TV in 1991, selling the underperforming channel 22 (then WPTT) to Edwin Edwards in a move that in reality created a local marketing agreement.

The standalone news department was dissolved in January 2006, and WPGH-TV began airing newscasts produced by Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI (channel 11).

The only applicant for channel 53 was Agnes Jane Reeves Greer, owner of WKJF-FM, the city's only standalone FM radio station.

[5] The planned spring date was scrapped when a strike at General Electric delayed fabrication of the antenna, to be fastened to WKJF's tower on Mount Washington.

[24] A Cleveland mail-order distributor expressed interest in buying WKJF-TV in 1955; he would have renamed the station WDAV and run it for the benefit of disabled veterans.

[27] The call sign on the channel 53 permit was changed from WKJF-TV to WAND-TV on March 13, 1961;[28] the WAND letters had belonged to a Reeves-owned station in Canton, Ohio.

[31] In November 1964, the FCC told 29 permittees of inactive UHF stations, including WAND-TV, that they faced losing their permits unless action was taken to put them back into service.

[33] Overmyer, as well as a group attempting to reactivate WENS, were encouraged not only by the FCC's action but by the All-Channel Receiver Act making all new sets UHF-compatible.

[57] Hyde concluded Overmyer's application was sufficient for approval"[58] and agreed with commissioner Kenneth A. Cox that the true nature of the transaction was to raise funds to save the warehouse business.

[59] Cox criticized the submission of out-of-pocket expenses and the loan and option agreement in the transaction, claiming it violated an FCC policy by providing a profit.

[80] On August 5, 1971, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Communications had asked the FCC for permission to take WPGH-TV and WXIX-TV in Cincinnati off the air.

[28] A Black-led group, Aquarius Broadcasting, investigated the purchase,[85] but Leon Crosby emerged the winner in a November 1972 bankruptcy court hearing.

[86] Crosby and his company, Pittsburgh Telecasting, spent most of 1973 awaiting FCC approval; during that time, a tilt in the antenna was identified as a possible cause of signal reception issues in some areas.

[91] That same year, Pittsburgh gained a second independent in the form of WPTT-TV (channel 22), started by the Baltimore-based Commercial Radio Institute (predecessor to Sinclair Broadcast Group).

[94] In Meredith's final months of ownership, the station agreed to join the new Fox network when it started providing programming in October 1986.

WPTT-TV had never been a ratings success, and WPGH-TV was closer to Sinclair's cluster of Fox affiliates that included stations WBFF-TV in Baltimore and WTTE in Columbus, Ohio.

[109] There was a marked difference in financial performance between first-tier and second-tier independent stations, and cost-cutting was seen as useful to WPTT-TV, which had lost $26 million in its 14-year history.

[107] Under the deal, Commercial Radio Institute, the Sinclair subsidiary that had owned WPTT-TV, held $1 million in Edwards's debt as a convertible debenture and received a tax certificate for selling the station to a minority.

[110] Mark I. Baseman, a Pittsburgh attorney, filed an objection to the two deals in March, believing the sales gave Sinclair too much influence over WPTT-TV and represented an impermissible duopoly.

[113] The FCC approved the WPGH-TV and WPTT-TV sales in June 1991,[114] and when they closed, on August 30, WPTT switched to HSN on a full-time basis.

[115] Threatened by cable systems seeking to drop the all-HSN WPTT, WPGH and Sinclair agreed to purchase and program nine hours a day of airtime.

[119] In 1990, when Sinclair still owned WPTT-TV and was setting up news operations for its Baltimore and Columbus stations, it proposed launching a 10 p.m. newscast for which production would have been outsourced to a third party.

To accommodate the news department, the Ivory Avenue facility was extensively remodeled with the addition of a new three-story building to help house the 40 full-time and 10 part-time employees added in the expansion—a total investment of $3 million.

The program had a slow start; though it quickly put behind technical glitches that pockmarked its first showing, the newscast was seen as a ratings underperformer with a share of just 3 percent in the 10 p.m.